Do you know why the average pf player is so bad?

[Nadda]

A big number of these issues stems from the changes brought by later expansions. The potency creep is real, even basic hits from players melt things compared to ARR days and the amount of stats your character gets fairly quickly and easily makes even Healers able to tank some things for a while.

As a healer who has been playing the game for a long while I'd have to agree. Old content doesn't hit as hard anymore and we hit harder.

Ask for the big jump in difficulty. It wouldn't be so big if we just gave that normal content a number boost. Nothing crazy we need to make this curry mild instead of weak. EX/Unreal is Hot, Savage is spicy and Ultimates are REALLY SPICY.

In the same way that our community is forgiving of mistakes, the game has also become too accommodating of mistakes to the point we've atrophied newer players' brains like an over-protected child.
And if the game doesn't give way to teaching and nurturing our player base, our community in response is gonna become more toxic over time as the divide becomes larger between skilled and unskilled players and patience/kindness evaporates.

And I don't want to see that happen but you can see it here in our own speech including mine that kinda simmering of the burden.
The Why only at higher levels of content do I now need to explain cure 3 creates an aoe based on the target and it doesn't have to be the whitemage as the epicenter. To a fellow 90 Whitemage.

[Gemina]

Nah, average players are bad, they have no idea what they're doing. Throw them in an EX trial and see for yourself. Midcore content should be the actual level of average.

No. Average players are average. When you take words out of context, I can just as easily say average players are good. Do you see how that works now?

Players who have no idea what they are doing aren't necessarily bad either. What they really are is inexperienced, and the range of skill and experience of players who go into unreal/EX content is wide. You'll find everything in there. If you are of the mindset that there is 'good', and everything below that is 'bad', then there is no such thing as "midcore." There is only hard mode (content you suck at), and easy mode (content you're good at).

[Asari5]

the average player from a certain group of players can still be bad overall

[kaynide]

Thought:

if your average player can do what the game requires of them to progress, does it really matter if they did it particularly well?

Outside of a very specific set of content that will demand bad players get better in order to find groups to do it, there is no difference in reward for being good at the game, or just mediocre.

That tells me the players aren’t necessarily bad, but that the game is just not demanding.

It feels that complaining the average player is bad -in normal content- that can be cleared with NPCs is akin to complaining about player skill in games like Minecraft or Candycrush.

[strawberrycake]

Thought:

if your average player can do what the game requires of them to progress, does it really matter if they did it particularly well?

Outside of a very specific set of content that will demand bad players get better in order to find groups to do it, there is no difference in reward for being good at the game, or just mediocre.

That tells me the players aren’t necessarily bad, but that the game is just not demanding.

It feels that complaining the average player is bad -in normal content- that can be cleared with NPCs is akin to complaining about player skill in games like Minecraft or Candycrush.

This type of thinking is exactly why it's an issue though. You're still on seven other peoples time, and given the role you're hoping someone else can pick up the slack and if they can't and you can't then it's now 6 other peoples problems. Playing in any online space on other peoples time is in of itself an agreement to at least try to do your best, and in the case your best is average or below, then yeah cool, no hard feelings. But if you can do better, or pull the extra slack, it's always nice to do so.

Because as much as people love to be gracious here, and in general in XIV, the average player is bad, And no, it's not because they die, It's not because they don't do high damage. It's because the average player is ignorant of the basic aspects of the games combat system and half of the time can barely keep up with some of the slower fights let alone the faster paced ones and then anyone expecting a max lvl player to understand what an invuln is, is now wrong and a bully in the eyes of the majority.


The issue is based in the inability to hold others to a standard. It's that simple.

[Kaliesto]

I have guilty pleasure of watching the newbies struggle a bit with the harder content, it makes the content all that more fun for me and to help them out.

Makes the battle a bit more exciting rather than being all on-rails easy mode.

I know its a weird take, but the game is just too easy right now and I'm desperate for difficulty in any form hahaha.

except Savage...keep that away from me.

[kaynide]

This type of thinking is exactly why it's an issue though. You're still on seven other peoples time, and given the role you're hoping someone else can pick up the slack and if they can't and you can't then it's now 6 other peoples problems. Playing in any online space on other peoples time is in of itself an agreement to at least try to do your best, and in the case your best is average or below, then yeah cool, no hard feelings. But if you can do better, or pull the extra slack, it's always nice to do so.

Because as much as people love to be gracious here, and in general in XIV, the average player is bad, And no, it's not because they die, It's not because they don't do high damage. It's because the average player is ignorant of the basic aspects of the games combat system and half of the time can barely keep up with some of the slower fights let alone the faster paced ones and then anyone expecting a max lvl player to understand what an invuln is, is now wrong and a bully in the eyes of the majority.


The issue is based in the inability to hold others to a standard. It's that simple.

I think you are missing the point the devs have tried to hammer home. You going into an instanced trial is you agreeing to do the thing for up to an hour. You have the option to leave the instance if the play style of others isn’t to your liking. They’re being bad at the game is not against the rules put out by the devs.

If you are so hard up that you need to play with “good” players, you have the option to make a linkshell/community with like minded people. You are encouraged to do so! But when you play with randos, you get what you get.

Until the game or the devs want players to improve, they won’t. Nor will they need to. That’s the game this is.

The core game is designed to be so easy that it doesn’t even matter in most cases if you even have a tank. Or a healer. If one person floortanks, you are still going to clear the content with very very very rare exceptions.

That’s the point. It’s not that the game doesn’t hold people to standards, it’s that the standards don’t match yours.

The game’s core standards are quite simple: Is the average player having fun? Are they enjoying their time enough to continue paying the sub?

[Valence]

I have some friends that are "bad" as per what a lot of people would say. They don't literally grief duties with bad aggro management, or things that immediately spell the doom of the party. But they do subpar damage, they die to more things than most, or just struggle with some things. They also don't care about outputting an optimal or decent dps rotation, they just want to press buttons and have fun. This is not even talking about actual handicapped players irl. You'll never know, and you'll still harass them for being bad. It's kinda crummy if you ask me.

I'm not gonna throw stones at them for having a different type of fun than what people consider a straight gamer experience in MMOs. The casual content is designed for them in mind, and they're having lots of fun in it. There isn't that many players like that in the game to begin with, but I've stumbled on true disasters in some roulettes (rarely), and we went through it eventually. They were having fun, trying, and I never cared. I helped, and spending 5 or 10 more minutes to clear it didn't make me mad about it.

I feel that a lot of people have serious entitlement and anger management issues online. Not only that, but it's very telling on the individualist IRL mindset as well.

People that constantly try to pit each other against each other for being "bad" are a total gatekeeping eye sore. Instead of trying to remove half the playerbase, perhaps it could be more productive to actually push for intricate jobs and things that don't necessarily ask for a higher base difficulty in casual content, but a higher ceiling for those who can.

[Merrigan]

Nah, average players are bad, they have no idea what they're doing. Throw them in an EX trial and see for yourself. Midcore content should be the actual level of average.

If the average content is to become more complex (and it needs to), we need to look beyond midcore as it's currently conceived IMO. Because no, reducing everything to an extreme level would be neither desirable nor pleasant. Let me remind you that in the extremes, it's common to wipe when a player makes a mistake, and that you have to farm memos via the roulette wheel. Without even tackling difficulty as such, i.e. boss pv, strat and the like, there are plenty of ways to make content interesting.

- Tanks are under-exploited to a miserable level. I've rarely seen a game with so much tanking potential, and so little understanding of the role. I'll pass over the absolute necessity of doing away with that bullshit "stance" idea that makes aggro automatic, whatever the dps / healers do: I don't think they'll do it. But even without tackling this problem, we need to exploit all the facets of this role, including placement, which is, in general, non-existent; and force people to think about pulls. What's worse, instances with these problems exist (Damzel, the old version; Aurum Val). We need to make these problems more common, and a little more advanced, and we'll already have a spike in interest.

- Healers... I'm not going to dwell on them. There's a whole thread on current healer problems. So I'll settle for bitching about two things: our heals are too powerful, our mana management nonexistent; and stop abusive rez. We need a rez gauge or something that prevents us from raising an entire raid if something goes wrong (lb3 excluded). As things stand, most people don't seem to give a damn about dying... And rightly so. A debuff, a rez that comes within 10 seconds? It has almost no impact in most content. Smn and rdm should also be limited.

- For dps, give them targets to prioritize (once again: abnormal, completely abnormal that this mechanic, which is nonetheless a basic on MMORPG, isn't a thing on FF) and control possibilities. Example : doton could be the equivalent of wow chaman's earth shattering, and have a chance of interrupting ennemies (oc : we would need more deadly casts for that... And the suppression of Whm miracle's stun).

So, instead of doing a strict equivalent of Extrems, the game should exploit all facets of each roles by changing the instances design. Make things interesting, more demanding in terms of exploiting your jobs abilities.

Edit : funny how the whm miracle's stun is the perfect example of the subexploitation of crowd control in this game.

[Nadda]

I feel that a lot of people have serious entitlement and anger management issues online. Not only that, but it's very telling on the individualist IRL mindset as well.

People that constantly try to pit each other against each other for being "bad" are a total gatekeeping eye sore. Instead of trying to remove half the playerbase, perhaps it could be more productive to actually push for intricate jobs and things that don't necessarily ask for a higher base difficulty in casual content, but a higher ceiling for those who can.

It's entitled to be a burden on others because as you said they don't care because they are having fun? I don't think it is fun. I'm tolerant of it. If this thread didn't exist I wouldn't even be talking about it really.

Nobody here is best player to ever play the game. I'm not the best nor is anybody else here. Well, if we're not the best but we're not the worst that makes us the Average. I'm at that level quite comfortably. People who are objectively bad at the game are not average. So why are we trying to lower the bar and say they are when they aren't?

Now to preface there are three Don't's on the path of being a decent player:

Don't be a burden. I can't play your role for you, this is a team game, do your job well enough. Don't expect to skate by doing things half hearted.

Don't make excuses. When you make a mistake, own up to it, no BS, no pointing fingers, Ask questions if you're confused, and try not to repeat it again.

Don't be a jerk. Don't kick people when they are down, A good team is a unit, if they fail we fail, we pick people up, we try again, focus on doing your job.


Nobody here is being a jerk by pointing out the obvious. I'm not gonna start harassing people and making people feel bad for playing a game they should be enjoying. The game needs to do a better job of teaching players.
EXs/Unreals are not hard the gap between that and normal content isn't as far as people think, we've not given players the tools to acclimate to that level. Sure people socialize or just care about the story fair enough.
You don't need to be max level to go to parties or socialize.
You don't need to play the game to experience the story.
You do need to be competent if you want to play the content that the designers spent the most resources on.

If you coddle people they'll never have a chance to grow. That to me is toxic positivity.
I'm not asking for base content to be difficult. It should be able to acclimate people to a certain degree of competency that doesn't exist right now.
I can't tell people who as you say subpar damage, dying or struggling they are doing a great job. In a world without adversity may seem like heaven, but really it's a type of hell, and the game has not given people the agency or competency to escape it.
I'm not gatekeeping people out of content when I talk about this stuff. When having conversations like this - we've been holding the gate open so people can do this content.
Only to be told; Oh people don't HAVE to do it if they don't want do, they don't HAVE to get better because the majority of the game doesn't expect them to.
Now tell me? How am I denying entry to the gates when you're constructing a wall behind me of excuses why people shouldn't try to be better?
I want those people in here, but the game and our community at large is giving people every excuse to stay away.